Sean Maher, formerly known as Simon Tam on Firefly, surrounded by former castmates. Or not.

About 12,000 people, many in costume, attended Dallas Comic Con’s star-studded February event at Irving Convention Center. About that many people waited in line Sunday morning for the noon panel reuniting most of the cast of Firefly, led by Captain Mal Reynolds himself, Nathan Fillion, whose every sighting Saturday was greeted with a boisterous squee.

Official numbers for the con’s first con in Dallas, at the downtown convention center, but early guesstimates put the number somewhere around 45,000 so far — and that’s before the Firefly panel, not to mention other big-draw Sunday Q&As featuring Captain Marvel Stan Lee, Alice Cooper and a Star Trek: The Next Generation reunion hosted by none other than William Shatner. (But, of course, none will top my chat with Christopher Lloyd on Saturday in front of more than 1,000 people. I could also be wrong.)

Under new management, Dallas Comic Con, now 12 years old, has grown up in a hurry: This is what San Diego felt like in the late ’90s, just before its Comic-Con exploded into a must-stop destination along the pop-culture world tour. Even the costumes are much, much better in Dallas.

You’ll get a glimpse of the convention’s growth spurt in the video below, in which The Walking Dead‘s Michael Rooker, ST:TNG‘s Marina Sirtis and Stan Lee talk about the joys of fandom. “I came from the theater,” says the U.S.S. Enterprise‘s former Deanna Troi. “To me, this is my live audience fix.” Rooker, whose estimable filmography includes Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Eight Men Out and JFK and Mallrats, says meeting and greeting the people who pay your bills is the least he can do.

Sean Maher, ex of Firefly, said he “initially didn’t like” conventions. “I didn’t understand the convention thing,” he said.”I thought it was strange — the autographs and stuff. I just didn’t really get it.” But as you can see above, those days are long gone.

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News, reviews, nuggets and tidbits from the world of pop culture, including movies, music, TV, local and national celebrities.